The Southwark Clearances

Twenty years ago, Fred Manson, Southwark Council’s Director of Regeneration laid out the aims of the Labour council’s new regeneration strategy in the Estates Gazette: “We need to have a wider range of people living in the borough” because “social housing generates people on low incomes coming in and that generates poor school performances, middle-class people stay away.” He explained that the Council’s new ‘policy is aimed at reversing some of the problems caused by past social engineering.’

Twenty years later and it is clear to see that this policy has been a resounding success.

Southwark has lost over 13,000 council homes since the strategy was announced in 1999. Whilst Right to Buy sales have played a part in the overall decline in stock, the Council’s ongoing estate regeneration schemes have contributed to a significant proportion of the loss.

That’s a loss of 7,639 council homes and net loss of 4,424 social rented homes as a direct result of Southwark’s regeneration schemes to date. GLA assembly member Sian Berry has predicted that Southwark is set to lose 2,196 social rented homes as a result of estate redevelopment schemes in its current pipeline (far more than any other borough). In addition, we can’t even be sure that the small number of social rented homes re-provided aren’t actually let at affordable rent - an increasingly common phenomenon as reported here.

Extract from GLA assembly member Sian Berry’s research

Council leader Peter John is the driving force behind the borough’s ‘regeneration’ plans supported by a cross-party ‘sink estate’ rhetoric. He wrote an article in support of David Cameron’s estate demolition proposals in Jan 2016, arguing only that Cameron’s plans weren’t ambitious enough and that more government funding should be allocated to the programme. In the article he describes the Heygate & Aylesbury estates as “symbols of inner-city neglect, with crime, antisocial behaviour, health inequalities and unemployment the only things that flourished there”. He added that “both had become hard to let to council tenants, and reinforced poverty, crime and inequality” and concluded that in any case, “most brutal estates do not make the best use of the land they occupy.”

In a local news interview he claimed that “brutalist architecture wasn’t conducive to building a successful economic community”. He evidenced this claim with an anecdote, in which he described local MP Harriet Harman’s visit to the Aylesbury estate: “Harriet and a councillor were in a lift with a man injecting drugs in his penis. That’s not the sign of a successful community”.

A sample of hundreds of council homes sold by the current Labour administration under this policy

It is not just council homes that are being sold off. Southwark’s ‘modernisation’ drive has seen it sell off both Bermondsey and Peckham Town Halls; Harper Rd Social Services Centre; Castle Day Centre; Whitstable Day Nursery; Abbey St Children’s Home; Willowbrook Community Centre and the Wansey St Homeless Hostel:

All in all, the Council’s ongoing fire sale of council homes, community assets and public land is helping its reverse social engineering strategy become a resounding success - all under the banner of municipal socialism..